I believe that this is a must read!Agape <><
Mark Rouleau
rouleau-law@afo.net
The irony of the intelligent believer
Posted: November 21, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
C 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
Let me begin by assuring the reader that I am no genius, except by some
outmoded and ill-chosen intelligence classifications. Genius is a word
best reserved for the supremely gifted, great and original minds such
as Mozart, Shakespeare and Babbage, not third-rate novelists with a
prediliction for techo-dilettantism and blogosphere debate.And yet, I am perhaps reasonably well-suited to answer the question
that has been asked many times of every intelligent and educated
Christian by incredulous atheists. How can you - an intelligent
individual with an expensive education - possibly take seriously what
is at best archaic mythology? How can someone who is otherwise
considered to be smart subscribe to what amounts to nothing more than
fairytales dressed up as history? And how can anyone who is clearly
cognizant of Science ever declare allegiance to its great antithesis,
Superstition?
I take no offense at these questions, for if they are meant to
ridicule, they nevertheless reveal that the questioner has perceived
that vital dichotomy which so often precedes a major transformation in
one's thinking. It is all too easy for the highly intelligent to
dismiss the convictions of the average individual, after all,
especially when one's IQ is as far from the norm as the norm is from
those unfortunates who were once considered imbeciles.It is not so easy, however, to dismiss the beliefs and thought
processes of those one otherwise considers one's intellectual peers.The first, and most obvious, answer is that one obviously can because
others of historically remarkable intelligence have. There is no
shortage of devout Christians on the list of mankind's most legendary
geniuses - many of whom are still rightly revered by atheists and
agnostics today. From Galileo and Newton to Doestoevsky and Tolkien,
men of outstanding intellect and achievement have placed their trust in
the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. However, it is all too easy
to dismiss many of these men as having lived in the pre-Enlightened era
and it can always be argued, however disingenuously, that if those now
dead had only been privy to the latest developments in modern science,
they, too, would have turned their backs on the faith of their fathers.The second answer is a utilitarian one. Science is a whore. Her very
essence precludes certainty, which is both a genuine strength and a
grave weakness. It is a strength because the scientific method of
testing hypotheses encourages a continual seeking after the truth, to
which no one who lives by a book that declares "seek and ye shall find"
should object. It is a weakness because the inherent mutability of
science is at odds with the human desire for objective guidelines by
which to live. This conflict tends to repeatedly create faux-sciences,
which, however outmoded, are clung to with all the diehard fervor of
the religious fanatic.For example, the field of psychoanalysis and the scientific disciplines
of psychology and psychiatry are still heavily influenced by the
theories of Sigmund Freud, who asserted that religion was an
illusionary means of avoiding anxiety from which an individual must be
freed in order to mature and reach full mental health. However,
genuinely scientific studies have tended to demonstrate precisely the
opposite, that at least in the Christian West, religion is a positive
predictor of longevity and social maturity, as well as physical and
mental health.Being trilingual, I do not subscribe to the literal 100 percent Word of
God theory of the Bible. Nor do I understand how anyone who has read
more than one English translation of the Bible can hold to it. (My own
theory is that the Bible is the perfect and inspired Word of God
revealed through imperfect men; while there are likely flaws created by
that process, it is unwise to introduce more errors by attempting to
further filter it through our own logic and one does well to accept
John's admonition to neither add nor take anything away.)And yet, I find it remarkable how often the wise men of the world,
despite the advantage of two millennia's history on which to draw, are
repeatedly confounded by an ancient and static text. The archeologists
and historians who cited the mythical Assyrians and Hittites as proof
of the Bible's inaccuracy have already been proven wrong, and soon
those who doubt the historical existence of a rich and powerful Davidic
kingdom of Israel will be embarrassed as well.Psychologists, psychiatrists and child-care experts have led parents to
turn millions of American children into drugged-out zombies because the
sum total of their expertise doesn't function half as well as the book
of Proverbs. Physicists and cosmologists are proposing imaginative
theories of strings and multiple universes - which suggest some
interesting supernatural possibilities to me, by the way - primarily in
response to the way in which the anthropic principle threatens to
render their disciplines mere tautological explanation.As for the secular humanists who are second to none in waving the
black-and-white flag of Science, the ongoing demographic collapse of
their cherished equalitarian societies in every Western nation is
proving their theory of religion's deleterious effect on society to be
as errant and intellectually bankrupt as Freud's is with regard to the
individual. Theirs is a rotten fruit indeed.From a utilitarian perspective, then, it makes a tremendous amount of
sense for an individual or a society to live by the precepts of the
Bible, even if one does so sans belief. This is, I would argue, the
most purely rational position, and indeed, famous non-believers such as
Voltaire and the 18th-century deists so beloved by modern atheists - as
long as they stay safely buried in the 1700s - would agree.Economists will tell you that the value of any model is its predictive
ability. This is why I reject Keynesian macroeconomics - which are
wildly unreliable - in favor of the Austrian school and wave theory,
both of which actually work on occasion. And while there is no shortage
of prophetic charlatans today, it is interesting to note how those who
interpret world events through a biblical lens have proven to be more
reliable than political scientists.Every dispensationalist believed the United States of Europe was an
inevitability back in the late 1970s, while the poly-sci professors and
politicians were still insisting that the Common Market was nothing
more than a free-trade area as late as 1994. The establishment of
Israel came as a surprise to almost everyone but the wild-eyed watchers
of the end times in 1948. Today, who believes that the United States
will surrender its national sovereignty to the United Nations and force
implantable currency on its citizens except the most literally minded
Christians? ADSX and DOC are both selling near all-time lows - an
interesting empirical test might be to pick up 100 shares and see what
happens over the next 10 years.The fourth answer is reciprocal action. Newton's third law states that
all forces occur in pairs, and that paired forces are equal in
magnitude and opposite in direction. Even when I was an agnostic, I
marveled at the hatred and energy expended on Christians by
non-Christians. I could not understand the cognitive dissonance
demonstrated by the so-called experts in their rabid attempts to
discredit all things even nominally related to Christianity - the
nominally Jewish Anti-Defamation League's attack on the Ten
Commandments being only the most ironic example of late - as well as
their ready willingness to distort and even fabricate history.Who has not heard the Catholic Spanish Inquisition, (2,000 death
sentences passed on to the Spanish Crown over 349 years) conflated with
the pagan Holocaust (12 million murders in five years), and the atheist
slaughters of the Great Terror, the Great Leap Forward and the Killing
Fields. (4 million murders in 20 years, 30 million murders in 3 years
and 2 million murders in four years, respectively.) And it is commonly
asserted that religion is a major cause of war, although, as I have
previously demonstrated, religion has only played a role in about 10
percent of all the wars in recorded history.=
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As Jesus Christ declared it would, the world has hated those who
followed Him from the moment it became aware of them - from Nero to Kim
Jong Il's North Korea. While American atheists attempt to stamp out all
public and private expression Christianity for fear of being wished a
Merry Christmas at Wal-Mart, Christians are being murdered for their
faith in Indonesia, Iraq, Nigeria and the Sudan, and are being
imprisoned for their beliefs in Iran, China, Vietnam and Canada. This
virulent and near-universal reaction to a religion that is more
peaceful than Islam, more intellectual than Hinduism, more inclusive
than Judaism and more historically beneficial to human society than
Humanism makes little rational sense, and can be seen as evidence of an
important element of the Christian worldview, namely, a fallen world
ruled by an evil god in opposition to the Creator.Now, this is not a Christian apology and these are not reasons meant to
convince one to accept the fundamental truth of Christianity. I trust,
however, that it will help those who disdain religion to understand how
it is at least possible to believe such things while also being in
possession of an education and a functioning brain.
Vox Day is a novelist and Christian libertarian. He is a member of the
SFWA, Mensa and the Southern Baptist church, and has been down with
Madden since 1992. Visit his Web log, Vox Popoli, for daily commentary
and responses to reader email.